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To Roast Hare

A hare roasted with lard or vinegar, stuffed with liver, basted with milk and butter, served with gravy and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Roast Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the hare and wash it thoroughly.

  2. Soak the hare in water for 1-2 hours.

  3. If the hare is old, lard it to make it tender or soak it in vinegar.

  4. Wash the hare well in water.

Stuff and roast

  1. Stuff the belly with a generous amount of stuffing and sew it up.

  2. Keep the hare at a distance from the fire initially.

  3. Baste with milk until half-cooked, then switch to butter.

  4. If blood settles in the neck, soak it in warm water and warm it by the fire, nicking the skin to release the blood.

Serve

  1. Serve with froth, rich gravy, melted butter, and currant-jelly sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + livertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Vinegar + livertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Milk + livertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together288 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hare
Is the main meat, which becomes tender through soaking, larding, or vinegar if the animal is old.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the lean meat moist and tender during roasting.
Milk
Used for basting, where its proteins and sugars help the surface brown gently.
Butter
Used for basting after the early roasting, adding fat and richness to the surface.
Vinegar
Acid that can help soften the tough fibres of an old hare.

The step that matters

Keep the hare away from the fire at first. Cooking lean game too close to strong heat cooks the outside before the centre, drying it out. Gentle early heat lets the meat cook evenly and stay moist.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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